How I Saved My Birthday

Up until last year I always had high hopes for my birthday to be "perfect" with little plans to make anything happen, and would just allow myself to get bitterly disappointed if things didn’t go as desired. Basically sums up my life up until that point too: High aspirations, no plan of action, no faith in the Universe, just wishing for things to work out, while constantly feeling disappointed.

Now that I’ve traded the mindset of wishing things would work out (while secretly feeling like they never would) to TRUSTING and KNOWING that exactly what I need comes to me all the time, I never need to worry about a “bad” birthday again. In fact I know that worrying is equivalent to wishing for something bad to happen (credit for that goes to Jen Sincero's book "You Are A Badass at Making Money", which I am currently reading and LOVING).

However, this trust in the Universe isn’t without effort. Just because I TRUST and KNOW things will work out, doesn’t mean I don’t get tested.

And on my birthday this Sunday, I got tested.

Here’s what went down...

On Saturday, the day before my birthday, I had THE MOST INCREDIBLE DAY. I was invited to a VIP mastermind with the great Love Warrior Goddess, Andee Love, and 10 other incredible souls. We met up in the luxurious Ocean House in Rhode Island where I INSTANTLY felt like my net worth increased just for stepping foot inside. I'm sure you can see why from the picture below. Conan O'Brien was even strolling around the place while we were there!

We talked about mindset, and money, and business, and spirituality. All things those who follow me know I’m game to have high vibe convos around these topics any day. I felt so empowered, so at peace, so loved and so READY TO GET TO WORK!

It was purely blissful.

Afterwards, I even got to play a mini-concert of my dreams in the MOST GORGEOUS location I could imagine. See?

I was in heaven.

When it was time to part ways, after hours and hours of glowing from all the love around this amazing crew, my boyfriend Aaron and I drove out to Providence, Rhode Island where we planned to stay the night so I could wake up and spend my whole birthday on the beach.

Those of you who know their geography better than me may be like, “wait a minute, she booked a hotel in Providence to wake up on the beach!?”

If you’re thinking that right now, God did I need you when I was booking this place!!!

First of all, I totally had a dream about this place before which is what drew me to it when I was scrolling through hotels online.

Secondly, I TOTALLLLLLY thought Providence, RI was Provincetown, MA, an adorable beach town.

I don’t know HOW I made this mistake. I used to live in Mass. But, alas, we arrive in a city with tall buildings and traffic and the mistake I made began to sink in.

We enter the stunning Biltmore Hotel and I’m feeling really fancy. I’m told at the front desk that our hotel room is on the 16th floor and I’m like “SWEET! A view!”

How could you not be impressed with a ceiling like this!?

We get off on the 16th floor and we look to the left, then to the right and we notice our hotel room number isn’t in either direction...until we realize, to our utter disappointment, that our room is facing the elevators. We’re not down any hall. No, we’re directly next to the noisiest possible spot.

Then we go into the room.

It was called a “Deluxe King” on Hotels.com. Ain’t nothing “deluxe” about this closet of a room. Not only was it very tiny (with a strangely tall bed we had to climb up onto), there were brown stains (allow your imagine to figure out what they were...I sure did) on my pillowcase and on the shower curtain. And that view I was excited for? Obstructed by a non-functioning elevator. Hmmmm...definitely some symbolism in there!

Furthermore, an entire wedding party (including the bride in her beautiful dress) decided to hang at the elevators and laugh and shout and have the time of their life at midnight.

I LOVE me a good night’s sleep. Especially before what I desire to be a big day on the beach.

But I also respect a bride and groom just trying to celebrate, so I didn’t interrupt.

I did, however, get pissed. I had been on this HIGH from my VIP day and thought nothing could bring me down and then not only am I in a completely different city than I thought I was, I’m also in a hotel room that grossed me out and was too noisy to sleep in.

All of those earlier fears of not having the “perfect” birthday were resurfacing.

I knew if I didn’t realign with love that it would keep spiraling downhill. We attract what we focus on and while I wanted to honor my emotions (predominantly anger and disappointment), I didn’t want to dwell on them and attract more of them. I had to use my tools and return to my trust in the Universe.

I changed my focus from “how am I supposed to sleep in this scenario? I need rest for an amazing day tomorrow, dammit!” to literally LISTING, in my head, EVERYTHING from the day that I LOVED. I let myself count blessings instead of sheep and not only did I sleep well...I got 50% off the cost of the room for my troubles!

Everything was already looking up because of this shift (which may sound simple but actually required a lot of commitment and diligence).

While I was feeling better and trusting my birthday would be fantastic and that there’d be no more hiccups in the road, I was a little disappointed we were so far from ocean on the morning of my birthday. However, we found the cutest little restaurant, Rogue Island Bar & Kitchen, with the best French toast sticks I’ve ever had and some of the friendliest staff I’ve ever seen. The owner gave us directions to a beach he thought fit my desires for soft sand, clear water and big waves perfectly, and we hustled off to go find it after breakfast.

As we’re driving towards the beach, we hit TONS of traffic in Newport. I read what I thought said 1.4 miles until our destination on the GPS and I say to Aaron, “let’s just park here and walk. That should only take us about 30 minutes and it’s beautiful out!”

That 1.4 actually read 1.9. I didn’t learn this until we had already paid for parking and started walking.

Not only did the walk take nearly an hour under hot sun on roads that didn’t have sidewalks and had no view of the ocean the entire way, when we finally got to the beach, there were no bathrooms for me to change into my swimsuit. My heart and body CRAVE the ocean everyday, but we live so far from the ocean that finally being in its presence and NOT being able to get into a swimsuit felt tortuous.

I felt like giving up.

It felt like we were RAPIDLY losing time.

I felt like I ruined my day by making “wrong” choices and did not want to walk another hour just to get to the car and have “wasted” my day.

I tried to sneak over to a bathroom in the private beach nearby, with no luck.

I told Aaron I was ready to give up. I felt like crying. I was so emotionally drained from trying to keep positive all day; from waking up in the wrong city to getting to the beach late, to now being TEASED by ocean so close to me that I couldn’t swim in.

Then Aaron suggested something…”why don’t you go into the ocean and change under the water?”

GENIUS!

Last-minute, as we had exited my car in the parking lot, I decided to throw a change of clothes in my purse with zero idea why. This is why you must follow your inklings. After diving into the ocean in my cute birthday dress (which billowed up to the surface to reveal my birthday suit), I changed into my swimsuit like a weirdo and HAD THE TIME OF MY LIFE in the clearest ocean water I had been to in years. The waves were lovely. The temperature was perfect. I was in heaven...yet again.

I honored how I was feeling, but I stayed open to other possibilities.

This is the key to living a life you love.

I never once “hid” my lower vibe emotions, or tried to deny them. I felt them and let them wash over me like the waves at Reject’s Beach (yup, that’s what it was called).

I rode the waves of emotions and stayed committed to believing in creative possibilities for my happiness. I followed my intuition which led us to that delicious resturant, which led us (albeit in the strangest way) to a beautiful beach, which enabled us to have an adventure, when led us to get an Uber back to our car, which led us through a beautiful area of town we hadn’t seen, which led us to the best ice cream shop and a perfect ending to the day.

Also, because I followed my intuition to randomly bring a change of clothes, I wasn’t wearing a drenched sundress all day...nor was I just walking around naked.

It was not easy.

I was emotional.

I felt like giving up.

Now I know these aren’t the most adverse situations for a person to go through, but here’s the thing, most of life isn’t. Most of what we freak out about is the little things; “how do I go grocery shopping when I have so much work to do? How can I possibly go about my day now that I spilled coffee on my shirt? I forgot to email so-and-so, what will they think of me!?” We let little things get to us all the time.

Because it was my birthday and I had traditionally put so much weight on its importance, I think I was carrying around baggage of years of disappointment as well that needed to be processed.

If I hid my emotions and acted like I was fine, first of all Aaron may have never come up with the idea for me to change under water because he wouldn’t have known how important it was to me that I be in a wave NOW, and secondly, my sadness would have only grown ten fold at some later date.

To live a high vibe life, we must experience our emotions. All of them.

I spend decades hiding mental illness and not processing emotions until in private when they were already too dense to even unpack.

Now I feel everything as it comes and use the tools in my toolbox (gratitude, surrender, faith) to return to a state of love.

AND IT WORKS.

Even when I feel hopeless and just want to give up, I just FEEL that emotion and then stay open to creative possibilities to get what I desire, and guess what? Things change. Life is like weather in New England. You don’t like it? Wait a few minutes and it will change. The only difference is that when you stay committed to CHOOSING new positive thoughts to replace thoughts of hopelessness and despair (after letting yourself feel it first, of course), you have the power to change the weather!

Nothing is random and meaningless. I went through disappointment on my birthday to heal old patterns of resentment and mistrust from previous birthdays. I went through finding a difficult way to enjoy the ocean to bond and become even closer to my boyfriend. I booked a hotel in a different city than I thought I was booking in so that I could discover a sweet new restaurant and learn about the perfect beach for me--which I would have never found otherwise!

I CHOOSE to see everything that happened as happening for me---not against me, not to me, but for me. And it wasn’t always easy to stay connected to that choice of perspective. But it doesn’t matter. It may take effort to stay committed to choosing a loving perspective but wouldn’t you rather have to put in effort to have a better day, than to effortlessly be wallowing in misery and disappointment? We always have the choice to choose a new thought. I’m not saying it’s easy, and I’m not saying to push aside painful emotions. But after years and years of depression and anxiety ruling my life and now understanding this freedom to choose, I am amazed at how I viewed my birthday this year (as one of my favorite birthdays) compared to how I would have viewed it just a few short years ago when I didn’t yet understand the power of my thoughts.

I saved my birthday by allowing myself to view everything as an opportunity to feel, heal, and be open to bigger and better things. In what area of your life can you do the same thing?